It's only with the lights out that it becomes clear why artist Ethan Moore refers to his translucent paintings on Plexiglas as "After-Life Portraits."

The sparkly backgrounds and borders of the pieces disappear, and the features of deceased pop-culture icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Eartha Kitt, Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson emit a greenish glow. Formed with a constellation of dots of phosphorescent paint, the images hang in the air like ghosts.

"I had always been very interested in portraiture, and just wanting to do a more evolved pop culture, Warholian portraiture with all the icons and everything," says Moore, a wiry 33-year-old with a neat mustache and beard. "So I got interested in wanting to do this iconic portraiture, but (it was) interesting to think of them as after-life portraits."

The exhibit at Many Hands Gallery is one of three on the Contemporary Art Month calendar featuring Moore's work.

Earlier this month, his work was in "Franco and Friends," a one-week showcase headlined by Franco Mondini-Ruiz. "San Antonio Collects: Contemporary," currently on exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art, includes a Plexiglas sculpture by Moore from the collection of businessman Rick Liberto.

The movie monsters in "After-Life Portraits" - including a bolt-necked Frankenstein's monster and the fish-lipped star of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," shaped out of the same precise, beadlike dots - came after Moore had lived with his initial portraits for a while.

"I just started to think of childhood experiences when I used to be afraid of the dark," he says. "I started to venture into the whole monsters series of what scared me as a kid."

The artist calls his particular brand of pointillism "atomic drawing."

"I discussed some things with (a curator), and he brought up the dots being a kind of a vocabulary for the atomic makeup of everything, and I thought he was spot on with that," he says.

Though his work calls aboriginal painting to mind, Moore says he was more inspired by the raised dot code of Braille.

He used the same technique for the sculpture in the exhibit at SAMA, a skull formed out of red dots titled "Deja-Vu." Instead of a single sheet of Plexiglas, however, he used multiple layers to create the illusion of dimension.

"I spent all last year doing dots," Moore says. "I've probably done like a couple billion dots. I saw it as a metaphor for its own religion - just patience and how I was able to separate from my surroundings and kind of center myself while I was working on it. It became very meditative, definitely therapeutic."

"I've had the opportunity to work with a couple of great contemporary artists, which has been very inspirational and good," Moore says. "(I'm) good friends with Franco Mondini and (have) been able to see his process and how he works."

Prior to the work for "After-Life" portraits, Moore was making sculptural work, wrapping mounted hunting trophies of deer and other animals in elaborately patterned "skins" and replacing the animals' horns with flowers as a symbol of rebirth.

Moore's current work is "definitely a departure," he says. "I've always kind of not really stuck myself to any medium, per se, whether it's painting or sculpture or video. I pretty much use the best vehicle to express what I'm working out or trying to explore."